Palisades Wildfire devastates SWFL family

The Wohl family used to call Fort Myers home.

Well-known voiceover artist Randy Thomas and her husband Arnie Wohl raised their daughter Rachel in southwest Florida.

Now the Wohls are left to pick up the pieces of their new home after it perished in the Pacific Palisades Wildfire.

“We didn’t in a million years think our family home would be the victim of this,” Randy and Rachel said.

Just hours after evacuating their Malibu home, the Wohl family learned they would never go back.

“We realized when we got to the bottom of our street onto Pacific Coast Highway we’re not going to be able to ever go back to our house.”

Their fear was realized while watching the news as they fled to their daughter’s home in northern California.

“The reporter walked down coastline to our house and she did the report from in front of our house. We were gasping. We couldn’t believe it. It’s like, that’s our chimney, that’s our fence. The fence was left. The house is gone, but the white picket fence was still there,” Randy said.

The family moved from Fort Myers to California eight years ago and couldn’t believe what they saw.

“The reporter was like, ‘You can see here some childhood photos and drawings and a childhood book that says things I like,’ things I made when I was at Canterbury,” Rachel said.

“It was Rachel’s from Fort Myers when she was 11,” Randy said.

They didn’t have much time to get out.

“I took a video of smoke,” Randy said. “You could tell it was a fresh fire that was building right behind the development we live in. Within an hour of seeing it, the smoke was not that bad, I really wasn’t thinking the worst and so quickly our home was almost orange outside.”

They grabbed their dogs, got in the car and fled, leaving behind decades of memorabilia.

“We didn’t think this would happen, so we grabbed nothing,” Rachel said.

Randy was the first woman in history to announce the Oscars.

“I’ve done them 10 times, 20 consecutive years of Tony Awards, where I had my posters, my scripts, all my memorabilia,” Randy said.

All of it was lost in the Palisades Wildfire.

“I really cry for my neighbors and friends and people who were at work and couldn’t even get back into our neighborhood to get their pets,” Randy said. “There’s just a lot of collective grief and collective loss, and it’s a very strong town. Those who are in the creative community, they will rebuild.”

Just as southwest Florida regularly shows its resiliency in the face of disaster so does Los Angeles.

“Watching everyone come together in a time of crisis is uplifting in a way,” Rachel said. “I have a lot of hope.”

This isn’t their first brush with natural disasters. The Wohls lost a home to the Northridge Earthquake in 1994 and went through Hurricane Charley while living in Fort Myers in 2004.

Once again, the Wohls got out with their lives and told WINK News their hearts break for those who don’t have a safe place to go.

If you are interested in helping wildfire victims, Rachel recommends donating to organizations like the World Central Kitchen, Baby2Baby, the Pasadena Humane Society, and the California Fire Foundation.